Welcome to Bottles of Djinn, the Web’s #1 source for entertaining, inspirational, and generally useful information, all specifically designed to support the supernatural world’s endless war against mundane reality. Like it or not, the Djinn, former undisputed masters of this world, are reawakening all across the globe. Welcome to the beginning of the end of the world as you know it…

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I can’t pretend I know for sure, but, logically, the greatest likelihood that I see for what happens after death is that what you are now will end up being wiped clean and placed inside a new beginner's shell, small, disoriented, defenseless, and, therefore, ripe for retraumatization; that, or, from your own personal perspective at least, I suppose you could also consider death as just one giant leap into oblivion. While both perspectives may be considered equally valid depending on how you're looking at it, that second scenario seems almost irrelevant once you consider the fact that somewhere something much like a memory-free version of you will be going into a new beginner's shell either way. I choose to focus on the immortality granted to me by this rather obvious common ground and to simply disregard the oblivion which neither you nor I will ever witness anyway.

My point is that even when you consider the fact that life almost certainly goes on regardless of any one individual death, it's very important that you realize the potential value of your current life so that you don't just give up. It took so very long and so much effort to get you here in a full grown body. Why waste such a long and difficult trip? You may just now be getting to the point where you can finally fight back. Do it. Fight back for everyone who will ever end up in the place you’re standing right now and in honor of everyone who's been there before you, but mostly, for yourself and for all the others like you, and, trust me, there are, indeed, others like you. There have been before. There will be again. I know logically that THEY are possible because otherwise YOU would not be possible.

When you’re feeling low, I think it’s normal to consider throwing it all away on one big messy push, the kind that might leave you dead or in jail, to attempt what you’ll tell yourself is some sort of Great Big Change. When life seems too painful to keep living, this might even seem like the best choice you have, “heroic” and “memorable”, but the truth is that you have as many choices as you can discover or create for yourself, and there's really only one way to know for sure what the future may hold, and that’s to stick it out and keep on fighting the smartest way you can. Any change that demands another's destruction as well as your own is, in fact, the very definition of stupidity, at least according to Professor Carlo Cipolla's excellent Theory of Stupidity (available here in a brief yet thoroughly enlightening essay). It's a trap born out of your own frustrations, fears, and pain, a poisonous plan that, ultimately, will only serve your enemies, or at the very least, serves one of my most insidious and destructive foes, the far too often invisible "Blue Devils."

Of course all of the encouragement and strategy in the world won't do you much good unless you're also taking the necessary steps to ensure your continued mental well-being, which includes getting sufficient amounts of fresh air, exercise, nutritious food, sunlight, sleep, laughter, physical contact, and displays of gratitude as well as acts of kindness. A psychic warrior is only as formidable as his or her shielding, a basic layer of psychic protection which, like all such things, requires the proper preparation.

Beyond such basic safeguards, the real trick is simply to be mindful enough to recognize the Blue Devils if ll of these hygienic defenses fail and they somehow begin pulling your strings. I now see their laughing faces every time I think of giving up, or worse, doing something rash in order to get my struggles in this life over with more efficiently. I see them and I know that I can't let them win. Instead, go for the continuous and steady change, the long and hard road, the road paved with even the smallest possible good deed, which might only appear to affect one or two people at any given time, but which I assure you will send ripples out into the world that will reach much further than you can probably imagine.

If you’re reading this, welcome to our struggle. This road is for true heroes, plotters, explainers, doers, and makers, people who go out looking for trouble, people who want the truth and are willing to share what they’ve found with others, people who are trying to love, and all of that in the best possible ways. It may seem harder to commit to when all you really want is a flattering excuse to check out early, but what’s important is that the smartest road shouldn't cost you your ability to keep making the kinds of continuous positive changes I’ve alluded to above, or, even more importantly, your ability to further perfect the quality and effectiveness of your basic social engineering. Welcome to Superworld. Go be awesome.

Simon Zealot is a recovering super villain now trying to help all of those insignificant common people he once sought to enslave and/or annihilate. He's the author of three books, The Shadow Society Guidebook, The Malakimae Manual and The Hermetic Grimoire of the Neo-Templar Order. He is also a special investigator, a martial arts instructor, an astrologer, a hypnotist, a fire performer, an escape artist, a world class mentalist, and, of course, one of the once conquered, but now returning, Djinn.